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"Two of the oldest libraries in Europe will join forces in an innovative approach to digitization driven by the actual needs of scholars and scholarship" (Monsignor Cesare Pasini, Prefect of the Vatican Library). The Vatican Library takes a big step into the digital age. A huge project in collaboration with Oxford's Bodleian Library will make some 1.5 million digitised pages online including Greek manuscripts, incunabula, Hebrew and early printed books from the famous collections of both libraries. The project is funded by a $ 3.2 million grant from the Polonsky Foundation.

“Two of the oldest libraries in Europe will join forces in an innovative approach to digitization driven by the actual needs of scholars and scholarship” (Monsignor Cesare Pasini, Prefect of the Vatican Library).

The Vatican Library takes a big step into the digital age. A huge project in collaboration with Oxford’s Bodleian Library will make some 1.5 million digitised pages online including Greek manuscripts, incunabula, Hebrew and early printed books from the famous collections of both libraries. The project is funded by a $ 3.2 million grant from the Polonsky Foundation.

The Vatican Library, which was founded in 1451 by Pope Nicholas V and opened to all qualified readers in 1883 by Leo XIII, contains more than 180,000 manuscripts, 1.6 million printed books, 300,000 coins and medals, and 150,000 prints, drawings and engravings. It reopened in the fall of 2010 after many scholars had directly complained to Pope Benedict XVI about severely restricted access to its collections.